


Gambling

by ArtemisTheHuntress



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Carapaces, F/M, It's only "teen and up" because Slick is a jerk who swears a lot, Meet-Cute, Non-Graphic Violence, Pre-Canon, Y'know. Sorta. A hate-meet-cute.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 08:31:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3403919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisTheHuntress/pseuds/ArtemisTheHuntress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is SPADES SLICK and you were only trying to teach the Felt a pointed lesson in respect around here.  You weren't expecting to see <i>her</i> ever again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gambling

Your name is SPADES SLICK, and this is the last straw.

The Midnight Crew has been the gang in charge of Midnight City for as long as it’s been in existence, the gang or the city. Fuck, the city is _named_ after your gang. You run the speakeasies, the casinos, a good chunk of the nightclubs, and of course all smuggling and various organized crime. You own the law. A lot of the time, pesky problem sleuths notwithstanding, you are the law. You have your fingers in everything, and that’s just the way you like it. You _built_ this town - well, not literally, of course, you’ve never done an honest day’s work in your life and you’re quite proud of that fact - but it would have never grown into the thriving metropolis it is now without you. When you found it it was just a bunch of huts in a desert, populated by near-starving exiles. Now it’s the greatest city on the green moon. It’s pretty much the only city on the green moon. And it’s _yours_. 

That’s why this new gang in town rankles so much. No one knows where they came from - no one’s sure what they _are_ , for that matter. No one knows much of anything about these guys, except that they call themselves the Felt.

Your intelligence network is the best in the city, and it’s still turned up nothing else. The Felt are like ghosts, or demons, right out of the stories you used to hear as a kid back on Derse. The only real thing anyone knows about them is that they’ve recently, and completely unannounced, moved in on Midnight City and are encroaching on your Crew’s turf.

The problem isn’t even just that a rival gang exists. Other “rival gangs” have tried to form before, but a few swift lessons from you put them in their place very quickly. The problem is that the Felt aren’t going away. They’re prospering. They’ve become actual competition.

You’ve tried to squash them before they get confident. So far, you’ve had only limited success. Some minor scuffles have broken out - some destroyed shipments, some anonymous hints to the police and the problem sleuths - and the fact that the Felt walked away from these “minor scuffles” almost completely unscathed was a shock that reverberated through the entire criminal community. Still, no one messes with the Midnight Crew. No one. If you believe anything, you believe that. You had been sure that you can drive out these interlopers before long.

But this is just too much.

Every person in the city, even the law-abiding ones, knows that the Midnight Crew owns all the casinos. All of them. There are of course independently-run nightclubs, and even a few non-Crew-affiliated speakeasies. And you know full well there will always be petty crime. You let these things go as long as they don’t get in the way of your jobs, or get too uppity, or annoy you in some other way. There are, however, some things you keep tighter control on. When the Felt started up a string of protection rackets a month ago, it almost brought your gangs to direct confrontation. It was only Droog’s quick and quiet intervention and some well-placed hits that stopped that from escalating into an actual crisis.

But everyone knows that the Midnight Crew had their tendrils in all of the casinos and gambling-houses in the city. It is, at this point, your last true monopoly. It’s not just a practical thing - casinos are incredibly lucrative - but a symbolic one. And just last week, the Felt opened their first casino. Right in the middle of everything, in flagrant disregard for the Crew, after you threatened them yourself, they go and open a fucking casino.

This isn’t just a casino, it’s one big _fuck you_ to the Midnight Crew.

That is when you decided that enough is enough. You won’t tolerate this anymore. These Felt, whatever the hell they are, need to be put in their place.

You brushed off Droog’s offer to handle it discreetly. No, damn it, you snapped, this needs to be handled as loudly and _publicly_ as possible.

Maybe you just have no imagination, or maybe the random busting up of things is in fact the most effective solution to any problem. You tend to lean towards the latter. Regardless, you decide that the best course of action is to go to the new casino, completely trash it, and burn it to the ground. The Felt need to know who’s in charge here, and you can think of no better method of telling them.

You wanted to call your plan for the raid Operation Fuck The Felt’s Shit Up, but Droog had renamed it Operation Titanomachy. You have no idea what that means and don’t care. As long as the plan is the same, you’d call it Operation Tutu Kittens for all it matters.

Well, no you wouldn’t. But that’s not the point.

The point is that, the night of the operation, you skulk into the Felt’s casino. Filtering in as inconspicuously as possible are the other three of your inner circle, the true, original Midnight Crew. Hearts Boxcars for direct and mindless violence, Clubs Deuce for explosions, and your right-hand man Diamonds Droog, of course. Among the four of you, you’re sure you can send quite the message.

Inside the casino, everything is a garish green. It hurts your eyes, and pisses you off. Aside from that, you notice that the place is busy, which just makes you even angrier. You’d try to note down who’s here, so you can send someone to visit them personally later, but fuck, with all the green you can’t concentrate.

And goddamn there are a lot of billiards tables. Who plays that much billiards, it’s stupid and you hate it. Card tables too. People are playing cards and billiards and is that roulette? They’ve got the whole goddamn works. But fuck so much billiards.

You and the Crew spread out, integrate, act like you’re patrons. You’re here to drink and gamble and whatever. Nothing suspicious. However, you won’t be for long. The plan you’ve agreed on is simple. At your signal, the four of you will start flipping tables, smashing windows, and stabbing people. You had briefly considered making the signal something subtle, like catching their eyes and nodding, or something like that. It didn’t take long for you to reject that, though. The signal will be when you start flipping tables, smashing windows, and stabbing people.

The ones you really want to stab right now, though, are the Felt themselves. And yep, they’re here. At least some of them are. You’re still not quite sure how many of them there are. They disgust you. The more you see them, the more you despise them.

Eventually - you _say_ eventually, but it’s only been about ten minutes - you get so fed up that you give the signal early.

You pull out your trusty cast-iron horse hitcher and start indiscriminately smashing things. Within seconds, the rest of your crew follows suit, and absolute mayhem breaks out. Prospitians and Dersites run and scream and abscond as fast as possible while you flip tables and strew playing cards everywhere. You even try to flip a pool table, but it doesn’t quite work. You scatter the pool balls instead, and they roll all over, skidding underneath the feet of fleeing patrons and tripping a few.

You ignore the tripping, scrambling gamblers, and call Boxcars over. He flips the pool table.

An explosion takes out a fair portion of the wall to your left, telling you that Deuce is doing his job. Also, now that complete pandemonium has taken hold and most of the people previously here are now are panicking or gone, Droog has stopped causing direct property damage. He’s moved on to Phase Two, and is now splashing kerosene everywhere.

You, however, are in no mood to stop just yet. In fact, you’re in the middle of a particularly energetic spate of smashing things when you see her.

You’d noticed her out of the corner of your eye earlier, as you entered. She had been smoking and talking to some other Dersite dame. You hadn’t come here to pick up dames, so you didn’t pay any attention. Now her companion has scarpered, and she’s staring intently at you, and holy hell you recognize her.

You freeze in the middle of what would have been an excellent smash. 

What? How can she be here? That’s not possible, is it?

The answer is obvious. Of course it fucking is. You exiled her. If you had since given any thought at all to the whole ordeal, you may have come to this conclusion a long time ago. But -

Why her? Why now? You don’t have time to deal with this, or deal with her. It’s not like you even have a _thing_ anymore anyway, not like you used to. She’s an old flame, no more than that. And you’ve been perfectly content, _glad_ even, to have that bitch out of your life once and for all, and not have to deal with her humiliating and fucked-up flirtations and you are most certainly _not_ going to go talk to her -

Ever so slightly, she tilts her head back and her cigarette holder up, in a smug but almost beckoning manner.

Well, what the fuck. You can spare the time to smack her around a little. Even if you haven’t seen her in fuck-knows-how-long, you know she more than deserves it.

You sidle up to her, making it very clear that it’s only because _you_ feel like it and not because she wants you to.

An unpleasant smile flits onto her face. Fancy seeing you again, Noir, she says.

It’s _Slick_ , thank you very much, you say. Your _Highness_ , you add, making it as mocking as you can.

Slick? she says. Well. I never realized you had a sense of humor. I never realized you even had the _capacity_ for humor.

The fuck is so funny about my name, you want to say, but instead you ask, The fuck are you doing here?

She raises one perfectly sculpted eyebrow. You exiled me. Most if not all exiles end up here eventually, don’t they? Surely you remember, _Slick_. I hate to think you forgot me that easily.

You shrug, keeping noncommittal. Dunno, you say. I exiled a lot of bitches in my day. You might’a been one of them.

Oh, Slick, you’ll have to try harder than _that_.

Fuck you.

Is that all you have to say?

Yeah. No. You didn’t answer my question. The fuck are you doing _here?_

Here, in this casino? It’s a Felt casino, isn’t it? Why shouldn’t I be here?

You can’t tell if she’s mocking you. Well, no, that’s not quite true. You know she’s mocking you, but you’re not sure in what exact manner. So you snarl and ask, The fuck do you mean by that?

She shakes her head. Oh, Slick, I forgot just how dense you were. Surely you must know?

If you don’t give me a straight answer I swear to God I’m going to stab you. Don’t think I won’t.

Oh, I would never do that, Slick.

There is a pause, in which you can hear only the sound of pouring kerosene.

Well? you ask, when she doesn’t say anything else.

Well what?

You know what.

She shrugs slightly, as if this doesn’t matter at all. I’m surprised it’s taken you this long to find out. I’ve been with the Felt for quite a while now.

It takes you a few seconds to process just what she said.

You’re _what?_ How - but - You’re spluttering, and you look like an idiot. She knows this. Hell, this is probably what she was going for. Finally you manage to shout, You fucking _know_ that the Midnight Crew is in charge of this town!

Not for much longer, she says with that smug, smug smile that you always want to slap right off her face.

Oh, fuck, she is ravishing, and _fuck_ you’d forgotten just how much you hate her.

As you stand there grasping for something coherent to say, she glances around the now-abandoned, completely destroyed room. Rather fitting that the first strike in this war should happen at a casino, isn’t it? she remarks, almost offhand.

You aren’t going to give her the satisfaction of explaining her pointless cryptic comment, so you just say, Good place as any to teach you fuckers who rules around here. It ain’t you anymore, honey.

Can you be sure of that? she asks, and it almost sounds like genuine curiosity. By making an enemy of the Felt like this, you are gambling with impossibly high stakes in a game you cannot win.

You don’t know what that means, but you shrug it off. I think you’re getting a little too full of yourself, _Highness_. Remember who won last time.

Apparently, she says, a sardonic note in her voice, neither of us did. That’s rather why we’re both here right now, isn’t it?

Nope. I won. And I’m gonna win again. You want war? You’ve got war. This is only just getting started.

Well then, she says. If that’s what you choose to believe, then I will very much enjoy watching you crash and burn. Good night, Slick.

She blows cigarette smoke directly into your face, then turns and goddamn _sashays_ out of the now-empty casino and into the cool dark night.

You stand there fuming and glaring after her, contemplating exactly what you’d like to do to her - though mostly this just involves _fuck her, fucking fuck her hard_ , both in the literal and figurative senses - when Droog comes up and breaks your reverie. The kerosene’s all set, boss, he says. Say the word and this place’ll go up in flames.

You look around. Everything you see is broken and destroyed. Playing cards litter the floor, roulette wheels lie smashed on the ground, pool sticks snapped in half are jammed into the tables and tear long green gashes out of the table’s felt. You shake your head and get back with it. This is no time to be rekindling an old romance when there’s business to be done.

Plenty of time for _that_ later.

You say, yeah, let’s send this place to kingdom come. Droog nods. You two exit - Deuce and Boxcars are already waiting outside - and Droog tosses a match at the oil-soaked building.

It explodes in a burst of fire that is glorious to behold.

You watch, satisfied. That’ll teach them. It’ll instigate a gang war that very well could tax you both to your breaking points, but it’ll teach them. Whatever the Felt are, your Crew is more than a match for them. You are willing to stake the future of your city on this.

Besides, the fight has now gotten much more personal. Beating the Felt now means beating her, too.

You watch the building burn. Your move, _Highness._

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in 2012 for the Homestuck Shipping Olympics, but I still like it enough that now that I'm moving stuff to AO3 I want to keep it around. Man, I'd forgotten how much fun Spades Slick is as a character.


End file.
